The Arizona Coyotes left the desert under very similar circumstances to those that brought them to Phoenix in 1996.
The franchise was originally located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, as the first iteration of the Winnipeg Jets. They played in the small, iconic Winnipeg Arena. The arena wasn’t able to make enough money to be replaced, and the Jets’ owner Barry Shenkarow was unable to come up with the means to build a new home for the team.
Jerry Colangelo, who also owned the Phoenix Suns and Arizona Diamondbacks NBA and MLB teams at the time, was awarded the team. He moved the Jets out to Arizona, where NHL commissioner Gary Bettman had been wanting to have a team.
The Coyotes never experienced stability for any significant stretch of time. The team first moved into the America West Arena and shared a home with the Suns when the then-Phoenix Coyotes first moved south. Seven years later, the team got an arena of its own in Glendale.
The Gila River Arena remained the Coyotes’ home from 2003 until 2022. In that span, the franchise went through five different ownerships and different arena management groups as the Coyotes proved they could not do it themselves.
The revolving door of owners and Gila River Arena contracts meant the Coyotes never found peace in Arizona.
Attendance was never great. The team was doing well enough numbers-wise in its first couple of years. However, after the novelty of a new team wore off, the attendance dipped at America West. The new Glendale arena briefly boosted attendance again, though the team was never topping the NHL in numbers.
By 2007, the team was struggling to regularly get people in the door. The number of fans bottomed out in 2009, and the ticket sales never quite recovered.
In 2019, Alex Meruelo bought a 95% stake in the team, inheriting all of its past arena issues. The billionaire had a mixed portfolio that included an entertainment background in media companies and casinos on top of real estate and construction management.
That kind of background suggested Meruelo knew how to build a support system and infrastructure for a hockey team. However, that also meant Meruelo cared about the Coyotes.
Meruelo never showed he cared about the team. He kept the Coyotes grounded in Arizona on empty promises and poorly researched possibilities while every opportunity to save the team fell through his open arms.
Bettman, who had been gunning for a team in Arizona nearly 30 years earlier, wanted the team out of Phoenix.
The Coyotes moved to Arizona State University’s Mullett Arena for the 2022-23 season out of necessity after being unable to reach a deal between Meruelo and Glendale.
The Mullett was not a home. The Coyotes couldn’t make it one for the two seasons they were there. The logo was banned from the facilities except for on the ice — not in the locker rooms or the outside of the arena — and no logos were even allowed on the broadcast.
The arena got packed, which was unsurprising for a space with less than half of the capacity of the worst years of attendance at Gila River. But it felt like a majority of the fans there were wearing jerseys for the opposing team. Tickets got expensive with demand since there were so few available, and games became exclusive to those who could afford the inflated prices.
The NHLPA hated the Coyotes playing in the Mullett. Bettman didn’t like the lack of future plans.
So, like the original Winnipeg Jets back in 1996, the Coyotes moved out.
Bettman forced Meruelo to sell the team, but not the branding. The Coyotes, their logo, colors, records and retired numbers died with the team’s tenure in Arizona.
Ryan Smith, owner of the Utah Jazz, was championing a team in Utah for years. This past April, Bettman gave him his wish before the last hockey season in Arizona had even ended. He got the Coyotes players, their contracts and nothing else.
Meruelo quietly sold the rights to the Coyotes back to the NHL and crawled back to the investments that he came from.
Hockey in Arizona seemed like an oxymoron, but it was extremely important to the growth of the game.
Only one NHL player was born in Arizona before the Coyotes made it to Phoenix. Now, the creation of one of the game’s greatest goalscorers, Auston Matthews, can be attributed to the Coyotes. The team was formative for rising star Matthew Knies, too.
Josh Doan, the son of Coyote legend Shane Doan, was born and raised with Arizona hockey, even playing for Arizona State at the Mullett. He made the NHL team to follow in his father’s footsteps last season.
The team was instrumental in facilitating youth hockey in the desert. The Coyotes hosted several programs focused on welcoming local kids into the sport, assisting in fundraising efforts and providing an example for the kids to work toward. Those programs are already feeling the effects of the team’s departure.
Despite the contradictory aspects of the sport and the heat, hockey belongs in the desert.
The Coyotes, its fans and the sport of hockey deserved better than what they got in Arizona.
